The Dark Knight Reborn
by TheGhostOfTheLostBoys
Summary: My name is Robin John Blake. I was tasked by Batman to protect Gotham City when he...died. This is how I prepared to do so.
1. Chapter 1: Origins

My name is Robin Blake, but most people just call me John. It's my middle name, and it was my father's name. My dad got shot over a gambling debt a few years before I graduated school. My mom, a few years before that in a car crash. The other guy was drunk and trying to outdrive cops. After my parents both ended up dead, I ended up all over the place. Foster homes, boy's homes, Gotham's East End on a cold Thursday night in winter. I learnt a lot about a lot of things. Alot of problems, and in turn, I learnt how to deal with those problems. I learnt that I was the target of some bullying idiot at school, so I learnt how to take a punch. Eventually, I learnt how to give one back. I learnt that one of my many foster dads was a drug dealer, so I learnt how drug trade works. Manufactoring to supply, suppliers to crime lords, crime lords to dealers, dealers to junkies. I learnt that in Gotham, ten people are attacked with a knife every week, and seventeen stores and houses are robbed, so I learnt about crime scenes. Blood splatter patterns, hair particles, fingerprints...everything you find in evidence lockers. And I learnt how angry I was at the world for taking away my parents. Not a lot of people know what it feels like, to be angry in your bones. I figured it out too late, you've gotta learn to hide the anger. Practise smiling in a mirror. It's like putting on a mask. When I turned fifteen, I left the orphanage and took a small-time job in the Narrows as a janitor in a small school. It was in the Narrows that I first saw him. The Batman. And I realised he was like me. He'd put on a mask, but I knew he did that because he wanted to deal with a problem, just like me. His problem, everyone's problem, was the crime. This city belonged to the criminals and the corrupt before he came along. He didn't just save our lives when he stopped that gas attack, he made us realise the power we had in our hands. You know, I even saw him once without his mask. Well, without the bat mask. He'd done what I'd done: put on a mask, a fake smile, to hide his anger. His pain. And I knew he was the Batman as soon as I saw him in his other mask. My same mask. I managed to make it out of the Narrows okay during Crane's chemical attack, but I'd lost all I had, which wasn't much. My small apartment that smelled like cat pee and crack, my medium wage job, and my two least stained t-shirts. So I moved to the North side, got a small loft with the little money I had left, and applied to a job filing loan reports for a small bank off 19th Street. Then the Joker happened. He and other guys just waltzed intoi the bank and started shooting things up. They put a freaking live grenade in my hand, with only one slip of my hand preventing it from going boom. The clowns killed each other off, and the cops were there minutes later. I was sixteen then. And it was then, when I saw the worst Gotham had to throw at me that day, and over the next few months when that freak clown tore this city apart with chaos. But he did it again, saved the city. The Batman. And he gave up everything at the same time, taking the fall for Harvey Dent's murder, and the murder of the others that Dent himself had killed. Batman disappeared, and I decided that I needed to help the city while he was...in hiding. I trained my body, built up my speed, my strength, and my endurance over the next two years, then joined the GCPD. And guess what? They didn't really need me. When Batman took the fall for Dent's murders, it City Hall put a new system in place. The Dent Act, which "gave law enforcement teeth in it's fight against organised crime." That was according to Mayor Garcia. So, the infamous city of greed beame a safe haven. You could actually walk home from work and not get mugged. Batman sacrificed himself so that he and the police could win. But it was based on a lie, and then evil rose up from where Batman and Commisioner Gordon tried to bury it. Bane broke the Batman, then he broke the city. For five months, Batman was gone, and Bane and his army held the city hostage with a nuclear bomb. But he did it again. The Batman beat Bane, and he saved the city. And died doing so. Memorials were erected, people cried at his sacrifice, and the four men who knew who he was behind the mask, myself included, mourned. For a while. But then, we were each sent a message to prove that he wasn't gone. He hadn't given everything to the city. He'd just left it in our hands. And he chose me to follow in his footsteps, taking up the mask and the myth. of the Dark Knight. 


	2. Chapter 2: Training

I started immediatly by going abroad. I'd learnt basic crime scene investigation and interrogation techniques from the police force, but after what happened after Bane was defeated, I quit. The structures had become shackles, as Gordon would've put it. But police academy training wasn't enough. Nowhere near enough. So I traveled, going in search of many great masters of the arts of combat. In a monastery in China, I was taught, rather brutally, how to fight like no one else by a woman I'd heard about in whispered conversations. Lady Shiva, the world's most deadly fighter. In the mountains of North Korea, I learned the skills of ninjutsu from a master named Kirigi. In an abandoned temple in India, I met a woman who taught me how to recognise and work through pain. In the urban jungle of Paris, I was taught the finer points of espionage by the son of a man who helped lead the Free French Resistance during the Second World War. In the wilderness of Alaska, I became a master of survival and the hunt, under the tutelage of a master assassin. And in Blüdhaven, I became an acrobat under the guidance of a guy who claimed to be an old friend of Bruce Wayne. I spent three years learning everything I needed to know to save Gotham from the crime that had sprung up in the wake of Bane's occupation. Criminology, law, chemistry, physics, biology, four different languages and martial arts forms from all across the world. I trained my body in order to become what the city needed. A symbol. A new symbol of hope. Next came the toys. 


	3. Chapter 3: Armory

Once I knew I had the skills to fight and survive the city's underbelly, I needed the equipment. So I went to a guy named "Fox." He'd given Batman what he needed to fight the good fight, and he was perfectly fine with doing the same for me. We started with the suit. Batman's old suit was good, but I needed something more. I got an upgraded version. Hardened kelvar plates, over titainium dipped, tri-weave fibres, for flexiblity. Fox also added a fully intergrated heads-up display sytem that linked back to a mass computer system in my base of operations, the cave I'd inherited from Batman. Next came the equipment. I decided on a basic utility belt with shurikens, explosives, and other various things from both Batman's old armory, and the old tools I'd used as a cop. After the tools came the transport. The Tumbler, his beautiful mix of a car and a tank, had been destroyed during the Joker's reign of chaos. The Batpod, his motorcycle, had gone missing after he gave it to a woman in black who helped him stop Bane's nuke. The Bat, his aerial assault craft, had been destroyed by the nuke itslef when he carried it out over the bay, clear of the city. So, I got something new. A vertical takeoff and landing fighter jet (VTOL) that Fox called the Batwing. Finally came the cave. His base of operations underneath his house. But I couldn't use the house or the cave beneath it anymore. He'd given the house to the city, and I wanted to respect that. So Fox gave me what he called "The Bunker." Batman had used it as a based while Joker was attacking the city. I had everything I needed except the name. But I didn't feel worthy of wearing his symbol and carrying his name, so I chose a new one. I became Nightwing. It was a name the acrobat from Blüdhaven had suggested. And the symbol went from a black bat, to a red bird. I was ready. 


End file.
